Since Friday, I have been sick. And when I do sick, I don’t do half-ass. I have no control over it, my immune system goes full tilt Don Quixote at windmills at the damned rhinovirus… or whatever happens to feel like trying to make a home in my upper respiratory tract. It starts with my throat feeling like someone shoved a red-hot steel wool ball down it. One of those used ones that’s all jagged edges.

Concurrently, my sinuses fill up with crap to the point that it feels like I have half a ton of wet, slimy cotton in my head that I can. not. get rid of, no matter how much I blow into how many tissues or sniff back. Sudafed and Benadryl, in combination, give some relief.

But, even though I may not actually have much of anything in my bronchial tree, that whole apparatus gets into the act of trying to expel the crud from my sinuses by making with the coughing. Unproductive coughing. Which has the oh-so-not-wonderful effect of making my sinuses feel like they’re going to expel all the ick through the top of my skull, or go out trying.

Saturday had the bonus of a fever that briefly climbed to 100.3°F until brought down by ibuprofen. It’s squeaked back up around 99 a time or two since. Yesterday, I finally felt good enough to stand long enough to take as close to a boiling hot shower as I could possibly manage.

And yes, Mom, I’ve been pushing fluids like they’re drying off the face of the earth. Water, tea, broth, even a glass of orange juice or two. If grossness from my sinuses doesn’t bug my eyeballs out of my head, they’ll float away.

Throughout it all, the dogs have stayed companionably close while not being quite as snuggly as they sometimes are. Good boys.

By the way, the only time I’ve gotten 250 steps in any given hour or over 2,000 steps in a day during this is completely by accident. And somehow, early this morning, I managed to raise my heart rate for my Fitbit to register 7 active minutes. I think I might have had a seriously hellacious coughing fit… or something.

I ran out of Benadryl last night, so I’m solely on Sudafed right now. And apparently, my body is saying “oooooh, we got sleep Monday, now we have speed, no Tuesday sleep for dj00!” Since I’ve been up for 23½ hours now and show no signs of stopping.

So, I’m back on the wagon a little more firmly now. In the last couple of weeks since I posted, I’ve gotten at least 30 active minutes per day except for a 3 day stint surrounding my birthday (the 19th). Today, I took Ronin for a walk and tuckered him out. We’ll walk the tubby off of both of us! That helped me blow all of my goals (7,500 steps, 10 floors, 3.5 miles, 2,500 calories, 30 minutes) out of the water for today. I feel pretty awesome. I’m also back down to the weight I was in October. Here’s to keeping the trend going down!

Ronin’s zonked after our walk!

Also, I’ve been better at being involved with my Lions club. Since I keep up the website, I was tapped to make a page for our first golf ball drop. For info, click here. I also made a flyer to hang up around the area. It’s going to sort of be the kick-off for our District Convention. We sincerely hope it becomes an annual thing.

As for the title, yes, I turned 42 on the 19th. One of the first things I said after the clock clicked over midnight was “So this is the answer to life, the universe, and everything? I am disappoint.” Cheese, I crack myself up. 😂

As I discussed with my therapist yesterday, getting back on the moving more wagon is harder than climbing aboard in the first place. Day two is going well so far. I actually got forty minutes in because my heart rate dropped below the zone before the thirtieth minute was done. So I went out and took a walk around the block.

My brother and his wife have gone keto, as a lot of others I know have. I know myself well enough that I wouldn’t last five minutes, and if I did go and lost weight, the minute I backed off, I’d gain it all back and then some. So moving more is going to have to be the ticket for me. Slow and steady. I’d rather lose two or three pounds a month and keep it off than lose fifteen a month and pack it all back on.

I am incredibly privileged in several respects, but most so in that I don’t have to have a job to keep a (pretty nice) roof over our heads.

This is fortunate for several reasons, not the least of which is because I am a fat woman. My BMI, for those who still put faith in a measurement so increasingly seen as outdated and unhelpful, is 40. My body fat percentage, as measured by a smart scale (Fitbit Aria), is 46.0% as of Sunday. This means that if I interviewed for jobs, my admitted lack of qualifications would be secondary to my appearance. Fortunately, I’m a white woman, so I have a chance, however small, of being hired.

So I managed a 5-day streak, but that was it. I haven’t gotten much of any of my goals in the time since.

But y’know what? I’m not stressing it. I have permission from myself to half-ass through the holidays. It’s cold, it gets dark early, and I’m allowed not to freak out about making goals every day. I am doing better about getting more steps in, and more hours with 250+ steps. All I need to do is better over all.

Something like twelve years ago, I got a Gazelle Edge glider. I used it with varying frequency until a few months ago, when I got a Freestyle. There were a few reasons for this. The “fitness computer” which is a basic recorder of time, distance, estimated calorie burn, etc. had long since gone kaput on the Edge, and it was actually only rated for a maximum weight of 250 pounds, which exceeded for several years. It still worked, but it squeaked and squealed. So I got the Freestyle, which is rated for 300 pounds, has a water bottle holder and a working “fitness computer” (with a thumb pulse monitor! woo!). The water bottle holder also ends up being a convenient mounting spot for my phone.

All this has combined to make it much easier for me to actually get a good workout in. The problem is that I’ve got to step on the damned thing for it to work. And I haven’t been for a couple weeks now. But I got back on it today. And I was on it for a bit over 20 minutes, which, combined with the few minutes I’d spent doing a couple of other things that raised my heart-rate, ended up garnering me 32 active minutes (i.e. with my heart rate above 86 bpm for 10 minutes or longer) today. I also got my butt up and got at least 250 steps per hour every hour between noon and midnight (as of 11:38, yes, I’ve already gotten my 250+ steps in for that last one). My Fitbit is happy with me. I’ve gotten in all my goals today.

When I can’t seem to find the energy to even stand from where I’m sitting, I will often say that my get-up-and-go got up and went without me. I think it was from a poster or something my mom had when I was a teen. I remember a bear laying flat like it couldn’t even summon the energy to lift its head much less any of the rest of its bulk.

I’ve felt like that quite a bit throughout my life. I’ve never been a high energy person. I’m easily more content sitting for hours reading than even a half hour spent walking. I have to make myself exercise.

I am now in the midst of my third week of not being able to find the gumption to make myself. I don’t know of it’s the season and increase in darkness or my body finally having adjusted to the Prozac and shrugging it off or simply my own inability to keep anything up for more than about six months. Certainly something to bring up with my therapist.

I don’t know what the heck is up with this week, but I can’t seem to get very far into gear, much less stay. I did do my one major project with the Lions for the back half of the year yesterday. We cover the morning at a local grocery store for the big regional food drive run by the local CBS affiliate out of Waco. Even though it’s the back half of what I’ve managed to establish as my sleep schedule, I went to bed early and got up stupid ridiculous early and was there. I even managed to not zombie through it. However, today I seem to be zombie enough and then some to make up for it.

This whole week has been kind of like that. It’s been kind of hard to even get up and get my 250 steps per hour.